The Effect of Thermal Annealing on Phase Separation in Organic Photovoltaic Films

View/Open

Date

Format

Metadata

Abstract

In our research, we used amplitude modulated atomic force microscopy to
study the effect of thermal annealing on the morphology of four recently developed
bulk heterojunction photovoltaic films. Each cell was fabricated by blending
a different conjugated foldamer or self-assembling polymer with Phenyl-C₇₁-Butyric
acid Methyl ester. We took topography and phase images of both the conjugated
foldamer and blended material before and after thermal annealing. The topography
and phase images were then analyzed to understand how thermal annealing affects
phase separation in these new materials.